With the addition of song search last month, Circle to Search has been given a visual tweak that removes the Google Lens shortcut.
Until today, the field at the bottom of Circle to Search matched the Google bar with the “G” logo that opens Google apps, voice search, and Google Lens. You can also tap to run a text query. Next, you’ll see a music note icon for song search, followed by translations.
Google has removed the Lens shortcut in case you want to perform a live visual search. This is a regression because you lose access to the lens anywhere on your phone in two steps.
old and new
Pixel phones have a Google Lens shortcut in the bottom right corner of the home screen, but other default launchers don’t have that shortcut. Workarounds include deploying the Google Search widget or downloading the standalone Google Lens app icon.
If this is not a bug, Google may have made this change to clean up the Circle to Search UI. Changing from four buttons on the side to three buttons on the right helps visually. However, it would be a huge shame to lose universal access to Google Lens on Android.
The change appears to be widely rolling out to stable and beta versions of Google apps after a server-side update this morning.
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